Block Chain, Big Data, Healthy Lifestyle or Internet of Things. How will these developments impact European companies? How can European companies profit from digital innovations and improve their customers' lives? These questions and more will be addressed in the various EIT Digital Academy Summer Schools focussing on Digital Cities, Digital Wellbeing, Digital Infrastructure, Digital Industry and Digital Finance. Each Summer School lasts two weeks and they will be held between June 25 and August 19, 2017.

The EIT Digital Academy will deliver Summer Schools in nine different European locations: Nice, Trento, Lisbon, Berlin, Budapest, Munich, Helsinki, Eindhoven and Stockholm. Over 300 EIT Digital Master School students as well as European professionals will take a deep dive into Innovation and Entrepreneurship, be exposed to the latest digital developments in their field, and get inspired by renowned keynote speakers. The attendees immerse themselves in real business cases originating from EIT Digital's pan-European ecosystem of scaleups, industrial partners, university partners and research companies.

European leadership

The Summer Schools are one of the ways EIT Digital wants to make Europe a leading player in the digital economy. Anders Flodström, EIT Digital Education Director states: "Digital developments force companies to constantly look to opportunities of keeping abreast in the digital era and look for innovative opportunities. Our Summer School offers our attendees the chance to master the digital way of thinking companies will need to be competitive in the digital era."

Summer Schools are the key element of the two-year EIT Digital Master School course for enrolled students. Places are also available for business learners, researchers and those working in industry who want to spend two-weeks on an intensive course to hone both their technical knowledge and ability to innovate and take back new innovative ideas into their companies.

It turns out that both students and business people really learn a lot from each other, as Nilofer Christensen, product manager at TomTom, experienced in last year's Summer School in Eindhoven. "In the project team I was in, students looked up at me as I was some kind of a mentor. That was very nice. In return, you as professional learn to look at things differently. Students have a fresh way of thinking. They don't hold back. For them, the sky is the limit. In a professional life you forget this way of thinking, you hold back to fit in a company culture. Another side effect was that I found new interns for my company."

Digital Finance

The programmes within the two-week entrepreneurial journey are centred around the EIT Digital's Action Lines in Digital Cities, Wellbeing, Infrastructure, Industry and, for the first time, in Digital Finance.

The Summer School in Budapest will cover Block chains for Economic Security, in where the students will learn about making financial systems more reliable, transparent, and customer friendly in the period of July 23 until August 5.

Digital Cities

By 2050, two-thirds of the world's population will live in cities. Europe faces the challenge of maintaining attractive, inclusive and safe urban environments though the digital transformation of cities. The two Summer Schools on Digital Cities Urban Mobility, Safety and Exploration and Citizen Participation and City Governance, address these challenges. The schools will start respectively on June 25 in Nice and July 23 in Berlin.